So it is finally being released next month, I've not got to try the beta and I'm not sure about pre-ordering after hearing that it is a P2P and they will have a cash shop. So for those who've played the beta or have seen it I'd like some form of input. Please keep the company bashing to a minimum and if you don't want to play or have no interest in the game please don't post in here, I'm only looking for people who've been in beta.

After playing the BETA weekend of the Secret World I would say this game definitely falls into my 'interesting' category, I actually have no doubt I am going to dabble in the game at some point even after the weekend BETA (which was rather buggy but then again that was expected).

I will say that this game is a lot darker, more urban, and has a bit of a 'horror' feel to it, which I liked. I will say that if you generally enjoy role playing within game settings, this game will open up the door to such play. That being said, what level of role play that will happen in there is I guess dependant on how much freedom Funcom allow. With their past game they generally aimed their game at the 18+ crowd. It will be interesting to see if Role play does develop in there.

The game itself I enjoyed, but to summarise the points that I would say were important to me:

- Custom characters - Like any MMO there is limited options, I would say it's on par with Skyrim or AoC, gives you enough options to make you different. - Movie Scenes - I enjoyed these, great video, great story. I would say it helps you get a feel for what your character is. - Loading and Cut scenes - In BETA these were sluggish, I am hoping that is a BETA issue, I spent a lot of time on static cut screens - General game play - Fun, lot of areas to explore, there is a huge opportunity here for general role play. Part of me hopes they have realised the need for a role play type game. The way you can enter shops, hang around and sit around makes it seem if they did...but it'll remain to be seen. - Combat - Sluggish and needs a bit of work, but its on par with most other systems out there. - Community - Who knows, the BETA community was large, and generally friendly. Like any other MMO though its purely 'luck'

Generally I liked the game, but the pricing model is a bit confusing. You have to pay for the game, game time subscription, character customisation etc. I can see this game getting expensive to play, which no one wants.

That being said, the master pack gives you life time subscription. There is a little confusion as to whether that also means 'game time' but I think it does (that is personal opinion though, they are still dithering on the actual answer, but personally, if they are offering life time subs, and also charging you 'game time' I think there will be a riot!) I would say though..play the game first on a lower 30 day game time sub. If you think you are going to play it for at least a year....grab the master pack, it'll be worth it. (for example £10 monthly subscription plus character slots when needed...in 12 months, you'll pay more than you would if you bought the master pack).

If you want to know anything else about the game throw me a PM and will be glad to answer any questions. Know though that this is purely 'my' opinion. Any loss or damage as a result from acting on these opinions will not be listened to

A modern setting is certainly something you don't see often, as is Lovecraftian horror...and I like the game for both of those points. The stories were decent, and any quest that WASN'T "go kill 10 zombies" was fun. The investigations and puzzles are great. There aren't a lot of them though.

Combat however felt dull compared to other recent MMOs (Tera and GW2), and character customization felt weak. FC says they have more designs that will be in live...we shall see. I'll try to avoid company bashing, but I've been burned by Funcom in two MMOs (Anarchy Online and Age of Conan) and reluctant to have it happen again.

It's made by Funcom. At best it's going to mediocre, with some flashes of brilliance in package that will be fun, but nowhere near the asking price. Just like their Age of Conan. Give it about a year and it WILL be free to play. And may have decent content by that time.

Since this thread already exists, and since the game is out, and since I'm playing it ... I'm hijacking it!

My first impression is that while The Secret World isn't truly revolutionary, it's different from the run-of-the-mill WoW clone in enough ways to make it stand out. It probably will go F2P, but not because it's a bad game. It's a deep game. It probably doesn't have the mass appeal necessary. But it certainly has appeal. I'll go down the list of basic gameplay features, for those who haven't tried the game, but are interested.

First things first. Character creation. You start by selecting your faction. Illuminati, Templar and Dragon. I won't go into the details of these. You then customize your appearance, followed by a short tutorial, at the end of which you pick your weapon of choice.

Here's where it gets sort of interesting. There are no classes. There's something called "decks", but those are more like guidelines - I'll get into that later. There are no classes. And you can learn all abilities in the game on a single character. If you pick a weapon and you're not happy with it, you can pick a new one. You can have two "weapons" equipped at once, so that's sort of the basis of your custom, tailored "class".

"Decks" basically offer guidelines for new players. It's basically a recipe for making a character, indicating which abilities you should learn and use. Because, unlike WoW and SWTOR, you don't have all your abilities available at any given time. You select six active ones and six passive ones, and you go into battle with those. In addition to providing you with that guideline, decks reward you with custom outfits for finishing them. Neat!

Combat is different from WoW in that there's no auto attack, and depending on your weapon of choice, some or most of your attacks will not be target-based. If, say, you're using a shotgun, your basic attack is a cone attack, which you fire in the direction you're facing. No targeting required! Of course, you also have focused attacks, which do require targets, but anyway, it feels less turn-based.

Missions are where the game really gets interesting. Forget "Go to x and kill y number of z monster". Missions like that are in the game, but they're not even the majority, not as far as I've played. Instead, missions are divided into categories like "action", "sabotage" and "investigation", all of which are played in different ways. And these are not just variations on WoW quests where instead of going to x place to kill monsters, you're fetching items. Investigation missions in particular are really interesting - and can be very difficult. These may require you to figure out a computer password, with nothing to go on but the password hint, and your in-game search browser ( which defaults to google... ). It's not hard to figure out the password when the hints are "music of the seasons" and "1723", but it beats killing a horde of enemies to get to a special enemy who drops an item which lets you right-click an object and finish the quest.

Anyway, that's all I can think of to mention right away. Back to murdering Lovecraftian horrors with a hammer and chaos magic.

It's made by Funcom. At best it's going to mediocre, with some flashes of brilliance in package that will be fun, but nowhere near the asking price. Just like their Age of Conan. Give it about a year and it WILL be free to play. And may have decent content by that time.

Funcom makes good games. Not great ones, merely good ones.

This.

I'm forseeing/hoping for a DCUO situation. They're not going to make enough money because no one will be willing to pay to play, and those who do pay to play probably won't bne willing to pay the extra for cash shop stuff. That kinda thing.

I have been playing The Secret World for awhile myself. And my own reactions are mixed. At times I both love and hate the game. Though honestly the reasons I enjoy and love the game outweigh the reasons that it makes me frustrated.

The loss of classes. This is a big one for me... As a character/player you are not 'shoehorned' into a pre-determined class, and you are free to experiment as you want. Tried pistols and just don't like it? Well just pick up a Assault rifle and start building that. Since about 90% of the missions in the game are repeatable you can easily switch over to another weapon and build up the skill for that weapon.

The quests. There are a few go to x and kill y number of monsters. But as was said before they are a very small portion of total game-play. And when they are they are wrapped in a compelling enough mission to make it seem less like 'grinding x number of y monsters'. This is something I wanted out of SWTOR, unfortunately no matter how good the cutscene was for the missions in SWTOR I still felt like I was just mindlessly killing x number of y monsters.

I'll make no illusions that I am not fan of the 'WoW clone' type of MMOs. I did not like WoW all that much in the first place, though I understand why many do, the reason I do not like it are not because I think it is 'bad' or this that and the other it just does not appeal to my tastes, that's all. I think it is a perfectly fine game, just not one that is suitable for me. The Secret World breaks away from the 'traditional' MMO formula -just- enough to capture my interest. My 'like' for MMOs is all over the place, which can be seen by the ones I do, or have played: City of Heroes/Villains, Champions Online, Star Trek: Online, Star Wars Galaxies (RIP), and now The Secret World.

The setting. Very Lovecraftian, but that is part of the appeal. Set in a 'modern' world I find that it makes it somewhat easy to Roleplay in. Even conversations that would seem totally OOC in other games... could be seen as In-Character in TSW.

The Bad: Technical issues. Sheesh... there are plenty. The game seems to like to cause my computer to just totally hard lock. To the point where the only way to reset it is to unplug the dang thing. I've never run into this issue before and have played 'stressful' games on it before now. A hardware glitch was my first thought, or some part going bad until I delved into the forums and learned I am not the only one with this problem. That chat... Local chat like /say and /emote simply not working for upwards of 3 weeks, though fixed now, this is the lifeblood of RP and Funcom just let it sit broken without even acknowledging the issue for a very long time.

My Verdict: I like it, I'm playing it I am on the Arcadia(RP) dimension. And heck if anyone out there wants to play with me, just shoot me a PM, I'd be glad to share character contact information. The issues with the game are not small, but the fact that it is not 50 levels of kill x number of y monster or kill x number of y monster until you collect z amount of a certain loot item... Has me sold, for now.

EQ, the other issue that you may not be having, because you're not interested in that aspect, is PvP. There's no balance in it. The ultimate player killing weapon (at the moment) is the Assault Rifle. It's just too good at what it does. In real life this would be no problem, but in an MMO which tries to make things 'equal and balanced' for the sake of fun, this isn't in the least.

Like I said, wait a year, it'll likely be free to play, and worth investing a couple of $15 purchases, but until then, most of us will likely give it a pass.

I'm afraid of all the Funcom launch bugs. Age of Conan (by Funcom as well) was my favorite MMO of all time. The poor buggy launch and slow fixes killed that game dead. Last I heard they were still working on bugs from 4 years ago.

How is the RP community in The Secret World? Are there a lot of social events going on and people running independent stories?

I'm afraid of all the Funcom launch bugs. Age of Conan (by Funcom as well) was my favorite MMO of all time. The poor buggy launch and slow fixes killed that game dead. Last I heard they were still working on bugs from 4 years ago.

How is the RP community in The Secret World? Are there a lot of social events going on and people running independent stories?

As much as I enjoy the departure from the norm that The Secret World offers in terms of the MMO-scape. I won't go through those again, see my post above! But the "Age Of Conan" Funcom is still very much there. The RP community was dealt a near death blow by a month-long chat outage that occurred right after launch. Basically all channels that RPers usually use. Local chat, emotes, even tells just simply didn't work for a long stretch of time.

There was a surging RP community just before the chat service went all to hell. And unfortunately even with the problems 'mostly' sorted out I didn't see the return of the RPers that left. And I can't blame them. A month's disruption in a basic game service such as local chat without even seemingly doing more than casually acknowledging the issue once... I think we know where this is going!

I will likely stay to enjoy the missions and -very- good writing that The Secret World has to offer, and then when I have done all of that, move on. To what I do not know. Nothing in the current or upcoming crop of MMOs has me even partially interested.

3 day free trial that starts the first time you log in (after downloading the game.)

I tried it.

My review:

While they've improved some things since beta, it still needs polish.

I was left feeling very lonely while playing the game. I enjoy story driven role play and I like an MMORPG with good story/background but the cut scenes can get old and tiring. It leaves me feeling like I'm playing a console game, which for me, I don't like it. I play MMO's for the friends and working together. I know there are plenty of chances to do that in the game but the cut scenes and questing feel very narrow. I can only have a couple of quests at a time, and it's almost impossible to find anyone else that's on the same quests that I am. Part of that is the low player population - which is sad because it's too early in the games life for the starter zones to be so devoid of life. It feels like I'm entering a game that's 6 months old.

On the subject of questing... I like the quests, they are laid out nicely and are fun accept for what I mentioned above. My personal opinion on them though is that although some of it is nice problem solving, some of it is scratch your head and wonder what exactly they are asking for problem solving. My first barrier came only a couple quests in when they started asking me to speak to "survivors." I hit a brick wall. I didn't know what survivors they were talking about. I talked to someone labelled survivor and nothing.. then I figured I'd start talking to everyone and asking about this "fog." It felt like the right thing to do... as I went along I was told that I was on the right path by other players. The quest and the game however, still tells me nothing. So, I've talked to a bunch of people about the "fog" and the quest never really updates, no new notes appear. There's no real verification I'm on the right path here.

I remember when I was in Beta playing that I ran into similar issues. I loved the quest concept but there was nothing to tell me if I was on the right path or not. Someone is going to say "well there are clues and blah blah.." Realistically though, you need to step back and look at it from the perspective of a new player - maybe one that doesn't even know what they are getting themselves into (never read forums, maybe never even visited the site) just simply bought the game.

This confusing quest wall where you don't know what's next, leaves you left feeling like either your not getting it, or it's broken. The reality is, it just needs some more direction that's not so subtle. Someone will most likely grab that say it's "quest hand holding." They they will rant about how they don't want it. I get that but in the early stages it should be present to help people to understand how questing works in the game. Easing people into a game isn't a bad thing, it's a good thing. Help people to understand then ease them into play. That equals happy players and people eager to see what else the game has in store for them.

Progression is fun but it's confusing (I was even in the beta's so I am familiar with it.) It creates a bit of a barrier to new people entering into it. The tutorials are painful to sit through - to much lip flapping or dry lecturing. Tool tips with links might provide a helpful means for it. Also, they give you decks.. the decks are great - build a set to match a special deck and get yourself a free pretty outfit. I like it.. but.... The deck doesn't explain how you build the deck. It just says "get 'x' abilities and you have the deck." They forget to tell you that you need to get about 15 other abilities before you can even think about getting some of abilities you need to complete the deck. The decks were/are a great way to help players get into play and follow a path for convenience sake - but they need to add some more tips and actively mention that you'll need to get all of the "y" abilities first before you can get "x" abilities. Progression through deck building is a great in concept but it needs some more explanation and hand holding in the early stages. The barrier to entry is to high to anyone that isn't familiar with it.

Character creator: On entry into the game you are faced with a character creator that feels like it was made almost 10 years ago. Very limited options, the little sliders are almost impossible to use. Not sure if it was just me or what, but I had to click on them dozens of times to get them to work or move. Clothing was all pretty much ugly. It was nice to have a choice between clothes, but 10 shades of ugly is still ugly. That goes for the character faces as well.

I'm not sure why game artists can't give a wider range of attractive faces. I also felt like racial traits were very dulled down. It was very hard to make an African American woman or a Oriental. They all looked mixed race. This was reaffirmed when I entered game and was faced with nothing but Caucasian looking players. Something that I'm not used to. In typical fantasy mmo's you have a drastic difference in racial appearances due to the extremes of the races (elves, dwarves, Sylvari, humans, gnomes, tauren, etc.. different games.) In Funcom's other game - Age of Conan (AoC), you had 3 distinct races at first. An Egyptian looking race and 2 Caucasian races that differed in their general size as well as skin tones and markings (tattoos.) Then AoC added to that an oriental expansion pack with new race. So you had 2 very different looking races and 2 Caucasian races that looked different.

I'm not sure why Funcom couldn't have added similar strong racial traits into The Secret World as they had in AoC. It would have made for a more diversified world.

Character creator.. sizes. Why are we all identical sizes? I know I know.. it had to do with clipping etc... That's just horrible excuse. Make the clothes in different sizes then. Really other games can do it, why can't you? Not only are we all from one Caucasian race but we are all the same exact height and weight? That's just terrible. Don't give me the clothing size excuse. Just copy/paste your clothing folder and resize the damn things. At least give us a small, medium, and large. Even that would be less then should exist.

The world: Love it. Mood, lighting, storyline, all good.

I like the monsters/horrors in this game. They are genuinely terrifying to look at - so much better then the standard cartoony goofy looking monsters in other games. These beasts have seeping sore that look real, they snarl and snap at you in terrifying ways and with the mood lighting and music it feels like a horror movie.

The story is told with a great Lovecraftian feel to it. NPC's in the game are either "in the know," or are completely clueless about what's going on. They have that rattled and edgy look to them, like they are fighting for their lives. Each one has a great story and there is a nice little bit of adult humor thrown in. The humor, thankfully, is adult so it doesn't feel like a re-run of a three stooges show or a Disney movie.

There are 3 factions in the game you choose from when you play. The factions in the story are interesting, they feel a bit hollow, but that's probably because I didn't get far enough into the game to learn much about them.

Overall the world itself feels interesting and felt different then other MMORPG's. I liked it a lot.

Performance: Impressed. I can't complain. I read a lot of the tech stuff on the official forums that said the game had hiccups on this and that vid card. They complain about poor FPS etc... I can't say the same.

My system:Vista 32bitAthlon 64x2 4200 (2.2Ghz) <--- that is under the minimum spec for the game.3.5 GB DDR2 RAM <--- enough but but it's not top quality ram, it's not even old gaming ram)AMD Radeon HD 6670 1GB <--- low end gaming card, older model250 GB (5400rpm) HDD <---- slow old HDDMonitor 1440x900My game graphics setting Medium DX11 (lighting and advanced(advanced) effects set to 1)My average FPS in Kingsmouth is between 20-40 fps. It rarely dipped below 20. I had one freeze up and crash in a solo instance when I accidentally set off a big bomb.

Summary:Good game, great graphics but a little confusing overall for the game play and design. Character creation is still lacking greatly in more ways then just what I mentioned. The game also plays decently on a system that doesn't meet the minimum specs. I suspect that in DX9 instead of DX11 it would have played even smoother.

If you have the patience to sit through a bit of early confusion the game is entertaining and a nice departure in some ways from a traditional fantasy MMORPG but it feels like Funcom had something great in concept and didn't do enough with it. Needs work on the character creator and ease of play for early entry stages.

Funcom should have pushed the edge a bit more and made things even more unique like they had initially planned it. They failed to deliver on a lot of early game development promises that I won't get into here.

PS: People are still complaining about some chat issues. I never experienced it that I was aware of, but I can't say that the game was all that chat friendly.

Basically that's the problem with most MMO companies nowadays. Great ideas and concepts but little follow through. Mainly because of monetary issues. Games are made for the shareholders, not the player base. Games are made f2p with cash shop, meaning that to be a top contender will cost 100s of dollars a month. Meanwhile, games like eve and wow keep going strong.

Basically that's the problem with most MMO companies nowadays. Great ideas and concepts but little follow through. Mainly because of monetary issues. Games are made for the shareholders, not the player base. Games are made f2p with cash shop, meaning that to be a top contender will cost 100s of dollars a month. Meanwhile, games like eve and wow keep going strong.

Don't know about EVE, but WoW has been hemmoraging players for years, we're talking millions of players leaving on a yearly basis. It was only because of it's immense popularity that it is still moderately strong going. But they're losing people and know it.

And Free To Play isn't pay to win anymore. A lot of the better F2P games sell cosmetics, things that no one needs to beat, but look neat (you have no idea how many people want their character/icon to look unique, or at least rare) and the even better ones allow you to earn everything in game, without ever spending a cent, but it's just a little slower than if you were to actually spend money to get them.